Mere moments after Stephanie had left the classroom in search of Mr. Faartz, had only her scream returned.

It was anyone’s guess what could possibly have transpired in those fateful moments. But Nevil knew, as everyone did, that a few seconds was plenty enough to leave a life-long impression on the poor girl.

She had been so cocky, he remembered longingly, as if already preparing her eulogy, so mean and self-righteous in her attempt to spite me. It was anyone’s guess what she must have felt in those last moments…but I’m sure she had it coming.

And for that reason he couldn’t help but shake the dust off his boots as he thought back on how it all transpired. After all, he had tried to warn her. But it was her stubbornness and desire to get back at him that had been her undoing. The thought brought a moment of silent contentment for him, having finally being avenged for all the hassle she had so smugly given him.

But even so, Nevil also still shared in everyone’s suspense of the unknown. If anything, he should have pitied Stephanie.

She was outside, all alone and unshielded from the horror that was their new carpentry teacher:

Mr. Faartz’s reputation preceded him. He was a known alcoholic and chain-smoker, but those were only the beginning of his vices. So, whatever he had been doing behind that classroom when her fateful scream echoed in through the walls- was almost guaranteed to spell disaster. 

The classroom’s chatter had quickly been reduced to muffled whispers. Everybody refused to speak up…and nobody dared to investigate.

Even Nevil was quick to admit to himself that he felt no pressing urge to race outside and play the hero. He wasn’t particularly large, confident or assertive. He preferred to blend in with the crowd, keep his hands clean and his head low to avoid trouble as much as possible.

So, it irritated him that nobody else stood up to take the risk that he was, admittedly, too unbothered to take himself. If anything, all he wanted was to make it through the school day without being roped into some overhyped, existential crisis that threatened his livelihood and the apparent existence of the school.

But seen as everybody else refused to do anything about the matter, Nevil was once again forced to involve himself.

Reluctantly standing up from his desk, he tip-toed towards the front of the classroom, studying all the nervous faces of his classmates as he passed them. He could smell their fear and knew he’d have no back-up the moment he left the classroom. He would be all alone.

“The things I do for you,” Nevil muttered bitterly as he tried to prepare himself for the drama to come. He pictured himself in a violent duel, fighting off a raging Mr. Faartz with a fiery trident to save Stephanie from the clutches of certain doom. He walked past the front desks of the class, scanning the wood-strewn floor for a potential weapon. Peering behind one of the cabinets, he at last found a sharp wooden stake which he might have to use as a stabbing-device.

An optimist at heart, his mind always first went to the best-case scenario…

He stood at the threshold, drew a deep breath and, in one motion, forced himself back out.

As his eyes readjusted to the outside light, Nevil’s first impression was that the air was immediately less musky and more breathable, as the pungent odor of cigarette smoke stayed behind in the class.

He gathered his whereabouts, kept himself low- stake in hand- and made his way around the first corner.

No Stephanie and no Mr. Faartz in sight.

He crept all along the side and kept his eyes on the far corner that was slowly coming into reach.

Suddenly Stephanie stepped into view from behind the rear wall, unaware of his presence. Step-by-step, the petite blonde girl carefully inched her way backwards, as if afraid to alert a wild animal to her presence.

Only a forbidding wind rustled in the distance, scattering odd leaves between them.

Nevil slowly crept closer, trying to be as silent as the grave. As he took the next step, he crunched a dried leaf beneath his shoe. Crap!

Stephanie jerked her head towards him with a look of surprise. The moment her face recognized him, she stood frozen. She dropped her arms to her side, waving him away.

Nevil ignored her and kept inching his way closer, noticing the panic build up inside her. He was at the edge of the wall, just unable to see around the corner, but knew all too well that some evil was lurking in the distance, ready to pounce.

All the more reason to get the jump on it.

Stephanie’s eyes blazed red at him, beckoning him to come no further and testifying to both fright and fury in this delicate moment…

Since the moment she had trotted around that corner -still excited, all innocent and deeply infuriated with Nevil’s indifference to her- Stephanie realized in an instant she had ventured beyond the point of no return- forever.

Having kept herself pure and undefiled all these years, both inside and out, she strove to hold herself to the highest of standards, to remain dignified and innocent in every way.  Her eyes now burned from the grotesque sight before her.

There he had stood, the very Mr. Faartz. He was a short man with a big head and a scrawny body -his proportions much more resembling a Funko-pop than an actual human.

With one hand he supported himself against the rear wall, bent over with his trousers dropped and his legs spread wide, like a prisoner awaiting a body cavity search. Humming a tune, he puffed a cigarette in his free hand, clearly unaware of everything and everyone around him. He rhythmically swayed back and forth, peeing against the back wall, jerking his hips whichever way to avoid the backsplash.

If ever there was a definition of ‘white-trash’…

Upon first laying her eyes on this unforgettable sight, Stephanie’s first reaction was to scream with horror. Instinctually, she had hoped that he might frighten and make himself decent before her.

All in vain, for it was as if his humming blocked out the rest of the world in his moment of private euphoria.

In this unending moment of torment, Stephanie had not the first idea what to do. So, she bit her tongue, held her breath and backed away slowly…

Nevil couldn’t see what had terrified her so, but his senses soon started filling in the blanks. He picked up on the scent of smoke coming from behind the corner. There was another bad omen, a coarse humming-sound that resembled the workings of a dated torture-device, maybe a rusted sheer. And within seconds, the painful sound had disappeared into absolute silence, meaning that even the slightest movement would now be heard.

Nevil focused his breathing, fighting to keep it low and steady, only to slowly become aware of another sinister sound that the humming had previously masked.

It resembled the dripping of fluids, as if something had slaughtered an innocent animal before poor Stephanie’s very eyes and was bleeding it dry.

Filled with fear and adrenaline, Nevil wrung his hands around the wooden stake ‘till his finger muscles felt like cramping. He filled his lungs with the sinister air and readied himself to unleash every animal instinct that was suppressed deep inside him.

And then he charged.

Instantly, he emptied his lungs and filled the silence with the wild screaming of a possessed baboon. Jumping out from behind the corner, he shielded Stephanie and thrust the wooden stake at the air before him.

Still bent over, Mr. Faartz jerked his head aside, staring at the both of them with the swollen eyes of a frightened bushbaby. He jumped away from the wall and hopped about like a bunny, trying to cover himself. All in vain as he tripped over his trousers and tumbled into the dirt.  

In that moment, when Nevil’s made sense of the drama before him, his screaming choked dead in his throat. He stood bedazzled, utterly bewildered.

Mr. Faartz was screaming and cussing, rolling around in the dirt like an angered toddler, as he tried to get his pants back up.

Time for the rescue, Nevil thought unimpressed and grabbed Stephanie by the arm, running with her around the corner and back into the safety of the classroom.

***

By the time Mr. Faartz came waddling in by the threshold, they had already snuck back into the classroom and seated themselves with the rest of the group.

He marched his short legs past the front desks so aggressively that his oversized head almost threatened to topple him over. Stopping in the center of the walkway, he swiveled on his heals and glazed over the classroom, scanning every face individually. “I don’t know what you may have heard, but I assure you…this has happened only once before.”

Another student stuck his hand in the air. “What happened, Sir?”

“None of your business!” the short man barked and dug his phone out of his pocket. He dialed a number and tapped his foot impatiently. “…Booysen! What idiotic group of students did you bring me?” He paced around the front of the class like a disgruntled toddler who learnt to use his mother’s phone. “Two little brats got the jump on me…ambushed me out of the blue…”

The class broke out in whispers amongst themselves and Nevil felt Stephanie shrink in beside him. It all had happened so fast, he recalled. Adrenaline was running high on all sides and Mr. Faartz couldn’t have gotten more than a second’s glance at either of them. “Well be fine,” he whispered, leaning in so that only Stephanie could hear him. “He wouldn’t have gotten a good look at our faces.”

“…whoever they were,” Mr. Faartz continued, “…they were disgusting and inappropriate, demonstrating a total lack of self-respect and conduct unbecoming of this school…” After a few moments he stopped in his tracks. “Obviously I didn’t get a good look at them…I hadn’t gotten my pants up yet-”

Suddenly taken aback, he lowered the phone, his voice low with apparent disbelief. “The bastard hung up on me…”

Nevil sunk onto his desk, shaking his head. Of all the vices, of all the bad teachers and vile scum in this school, he had to get himself mixed up with the worst of them all. He brushed against Stephanie, mad for the part she played in all this. “You had to go and call him, all out of spite…”

“Not now,” she whispered, bumping him away. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Everything in Nevil wanted to lash out at her, but he knew that would have been the worst possible decision for them both. Best keep a low profile for the rest of the week, or however long before Mr. Faartz’s next hangover erased his memory. In the meantime, nothing should be done that would have them stand out in any way. So, it was all he could do to bite his tongue and fume at her in silence.

Still fixated on the phone in his hands, Mr. Faartz nearly bent his small body double as he furiously shook the device. “Don’t you hang up on me, Booysen!” He dialed again and shoved the phone against his ear. “…Hello…It’s Faartz…We work together, you idiot-”

He lowered the phone. “He did it again…”

The class stared at him with a tangible silence.

Now that their teacher couldn’t get his justice over the phone, Nevil feared, as everyone else did, that he would direct his anger towards them.

But all Mr. Faartz did was stand center of the class, gaping lazily as he stared out into the distance, focusing on nobody and nothing specific. To Nevil, he seemed like a zombie, mindless and mute.

The tension was palpable as everyone waited for him to burst out into some violent rant. But nothing came.

After a while, he simply drew a deep breath that bloated his belly and exhaled again slowly, signifying a man truly at the end of his rope. “Screw it,” he muttered and took another cigarette out of his breast pocket. “Anybody got a lighter?”

The class remained silent as the grave, sitting still like little mice trapped in a corner, hoping the cat wouldn’t pick them out.

“Nobody?” he asked, then threw his hands up in the air. “Fine, be selfish. It’s not like I don’t know that you buggers also smoke. But that’s all good and dandy, it’s not like I would’ve shared with any of you scum either!” He stuffed the cigarette in his mouth and started peering all around the classroom. “I’ll do it myself…”

He poked his head in and around his desk until he seemed to find what he had been looking for. “There you are,” he mumbled and, with great effort, dragged a steel rod from behind one of his filing cabinets. Resting it on his hip, he used his free hand to stack a pile of wooden off-cuts beside an industrial bench grinder.

“Sir, what are you doing?” one of the students asked.

“Mother would be disappointed if she saw me give up that easily,” he mumbled, pursing his lips to keep the cigarette from falling out. “Either find a way…or make one. At least that’s what she used to say.”

Yes, Nevil thought unimpressed. Surely this must have been what she had in mind…

Mr. Faartz then punched the on-button and the bench grinder powered-up. In a matter of seconds, the granite wheel was spinning at an enormous speed, wining violently as it shook the bench beneath it. The next moment, he raised the steel rod in both hands, like a dwarf yielding a great lance, and shoved it against the spinning wheel.

Sparks spat out like confetti, spraying fiery shavings of metal in every direction. The class scuffled away, moaning and groaning as they shielded their faces.

Within a few moments, the wooden off-cuts beside the machine caught fire.

Mr. Faartz then stopped the machine and dropped the rod aside. Bending low, he drew a deep breath, gently kindling the flames by blowing into it with the gentle breath of an angel. So delicate. He then lowered his head and tipped the cigarette into the burning embers. “Perfect,” he muttered as he raised himself, puffing the joint. “If Mama could only see me now…”

Yes, thought Nevil with utter bewilderment. I’m sure you’d bring tears to her eyes…

Mr. Faartz slapped his hands together and turned to the class. “Alright, you scummy lot! Let’s get on with it. If even my own colleagues denounce me, I might as well take the law into my own hands.”

Nevil sensed Stephanie’s breathing stop and her little body tense up. He leaned forward and over as to slightly shield her, for however much it might calm her. He knew she still couldn’t stand him.

Mr. Faartz scanned the classroom, squinting his eyes and puffing clouds of smoke around him, as if he were a cowboy deciding who to duel with.

He might have been intimidating, Nevil thought, if he didn’t look like an overgrown toddler with patchy neck-stubble, who’d all too easily throw himself off-balance just by tilting his head too much. 

“…Because mark my words,” their teacher continued. “I will get my vengeance.”

Before Nevil could stop her, Stephanie raised her hand, shaking. “Sir…what would the punishment be if these students were ever found out?”

Nevil groaned and slapped her hand down, his voice a whisper. “Why would you ask that?!”

Mr. Faartz followed her voice and, upon laying eyes on her, seemed taken aback.

Nevil felt his heart drop in his shoes.

Their teacher squinted his eyes, as if realizing something that he hadn’t before. “Why’s there a woman in my class?”

Now Stephanie seemed taken aback. “Sir?”

Mr. Faartz shrugged his shoulders and shook his big head with a look of utter disbelief, seeming confused that nobody else shared in his bewilderment. “What good would woodworking do a woman? Shouldn’t you be out learning how to iron clothes and cook meals?”

And in that moment Nevil saw Stephanie’s earlier defiance return.

“Because it is not the 1860’s anymore, Sir,” she answered briskly, tensing her back straight up and stiffening her neck, as if it could stretch to the ceiling. “A woman can do all the same things a man can!”

Mr. Faartz giggled, puffing further on his cigarette. “Is that so?”

“Absolutely,” she replied firmly, seeming to forget her earlier fear.

Mr. Faartz shook his head, as if in disbelief at her child-like ignorance. “Lady, you couldn’t compete with me. I’m the school’s designated safety officer. I’ve put my life on the line in ways that would surprise you.”

“Yes,” she agreed, looking quite confused herself. “They really do surprise me-”

“I’m the only thing in this school standing between chaos and total anarchy!” He flicked his cigarette aside and onto the lap of a nearby student. “Do you honestly think you could do what I do?”

“Everything!” Stephanie protested, with the condescending tone returning to her voice. “…except for standing while urinating, of course…”

Oh no, thought Nevil as he heard her spout those words. He realized Stephanie didn’t understand what she’d just said.

“Excuse me?” Mr. Faartz asked, stepping closer.

Nevil sighed, his voice a whisper. “You bloody feminist. Now you’ve doomed us both!”

“Uhm…” Stephanie couldn’t hide her look of shock and realization at what she’d just done. “Surely, you stand and pee, don’t you?”

But Mr. Faartz saw right through her. Peering at them both, he scuffled closer, bobbing his head this way and that. “How do you know I don’t sit and pee?”

He caught us, thought Nevil. His time has finally come. After all this struggle, the end is finally upon him. If this is how I go out, then let it be in fire and glory, he decided, gripping the wooden stake that he hid beneath the table. Aim for the heart…

Stephanie struggled for the words. “Uhm…but why would you sit and pee, Sir? Your presence is simply too masculine to do something that lady-like?”

“Yes, you’re right…” Mr. Faartz stopped in his tracks, seeming to contemplate her answer. “I am very masculine, aren’t I?”

“Indeed, Sir,” said Stephanie, resuming her innocent school-girl allure as to throw him off-track. “I bet all the women in this school find you irresistible.”

Mr. Faartz chuckled dryly. “Oh, no thank you…I would sooner be impaled in the chest with a sharp pole than tie myself to anyone in this crazy school…”

It’s so tempting, thought Nevil, just take another step…

Mr. Faartz was about to scuffle closer, but as he did-

RRIIIIIINNNGGGGG!

-the school bell rang for end of period.

“Saved by the bell!” he laughed, turning around and waving the class out.

Very true, Sir, thought Nevil, very true…